Thursday, April 24, 2014

The
world of interactive media has grown increasingly popular with each consecutive
year. People are tending to gravitate
towards an experience that can give them an occasional escape from the doldrums
of reality. These games can range
anywhere from a simple, one-tap control mobile game to immense open world
alternate realities. “The video game
industry’s revenues surpassed the movie industry’s several years ago, and it
surpassed the music industry’s in 2008.”(Gentile 2009) These games have expanded to be available on
almost every kind of electronic device.
One aspect of these games has started to become the center of a lot of
research on interactive media. It
started with the obsession that playing video games always tends to have a
negative effect on the players by making them more violent, but then it was
taken one step further. Not only was the
question why do people play violent video games but instead was why do people
play video games? One of the most
popular games in recent years has been a title called the World of Warcraft
which had 12 million active players worldwide in 2010. (Blizzard 2010) The main reason World of Warcraft was able to
achieve this massive player base was the fact that it was a social experience,
designed around meeting and interacting with other players in a virtual world.

World of Warcraft
was classified as a massively multiplayer online role playing game or MMORPG. MMORPG’s have become increasingly popular
after World of Warcraft opened the floodgates into the realm of online gaming possibilities. The game’s players would start the game with
a character they were allowed to customize from many different fantasy
races. Anything from orcs to elves,
gnomes to the undead, World of Warcraft was a diverse place where you could
usually find a character type that would personify yourself as a player. In the beginning of the game you would have
to go off on your own and start the process known as “questing.” Questing was a way to accomplish small tasks
within the game that would give your character experience points, gold and
sometimes even equipment to use in your adventures. Then with these experience points, you might “level
up” and increase the base statistics and strengths of your character and even
occasionally acquire new skills that would help you in your quest to make your
character more powerful. These abilities
could be anything from a new offensive power that can help you destroy more
enemies or a defensive ability that reinforces the survivability of your player
character and sometimes other players.
Eventually in your questing you would encounter what would be a “group
quest” or a “dungeon quest.” These
quests suggested that you would need more than one person to accomplish them.

The first group quest
in the game for players that chose the Human race in game would be the slaying
of a beast named Hogger. This was the
first time within the game that the player would need to branch out of their
solo experience and enlist the help of others.
If you could gather extra players to assist in eliminating Hogger, the
rewards were great. There were always
other options though. Through clever
gameplay mechanics, some players might find a way to destroy Hogger on their
own, and others would just avoid the quest altogether to favor the solo
questing experience. The convenience of
having options to choose from when met with adversities in the game was always
one of the best selling points World of Warcraft ever had. This appealed to a wider audience of
introverts and extroverts alike. Even
though the ability to avoid the quest was apparent, the rewards for completing
it were always tempting. The game was
designed around the group experience.
Later in the game, players would encounter the first dungeons within the
game. Dungeons were a zone that would be
within the game that would have a series of smaller battles leading up to a
confrontation with a story-relevant boss battle. Boss battles were usually non-player
characters within the game that had some relevance within the game’s lore and
would usually require dispatching, but they were too powerful to be taken on by
a solo player in the main game world. The game was designed that a small group
of five players could accomplish the imminent boss battle. Now you had players branching out from not
just introducing themselves to just one other person within the game world, but
now you had to make a small community to accomplish a shared goal. Throughout the game’s history, these group
sizes would increase to 10, 20 and even 40 man encounters that would later be
called “raids.”

The first raids
needed a coordinated group of forty players working together to be able to
accomplish the more difficult content within the game. These raids would then usually split up into
some form of hierarchy. A designated
raid leader, sometimes decided by a democratic or authoritative leader, would
be chosen, as well as other leaders within the raid that would get chosen in
both formal and informal ways. Raids
would sometimes have class or role leaders depending on the level of
organization. Class leaders would be
leaders among any given in-game player class.
The classes in World of Warcraft were warlock, mage, paladin, priest,
warrior, rogue, druid and shaman. Then
other times there were role leaders.
These roles were tanking, damage dealers, and healers. Tanks were the players that were in charge of
handling mob aggro. Aggro was defined as
maintaining the attention of the enemies around you. The tanks were in charge of protecting the
rest of the raid group from harm. The
damage dealers were the players that specialized in dispatching the in-game
enemies. The healers were the players
that were more interested in a support role.
They were in charge of keeping their allies alive and using abilities
that benefit the other players in some way.
This combination of tanks, healers and damage dealers has been described
as the “Holy Trinity” of MMO gaming. It
has been a popular game design style for a majority of these massively
multiplayer online experiences. These
are roles that players can immediately understand and predict their role in a
group setting. The many different group
challenges in World of Warcraft then lead to the forming of Guilds.

A guild is just
another name for a tribe. Tribes are a
social group that is usually a close-knit community based on relationships, the
exchange of goods, and a common location.
In MMORPG’s these tribes have different names like Clan, Corporation,
Guild, Conglomerate, or even Fireteam.
In World of Warcraft, they are simply referred to as guilds. Guilds are formed by people that are friends
or related in the real world, and then expand by meeting new people online,
communicating with them, and discovering that they have similar goals within
the game that they would like to obtain.
These guilds would come together for a variety of reasons in World of
Warcraft. Some players enjoyed the small
group setting and playing several different characters through the questing
experience and just doing the five person group content. Other players would strive to be competitive
and defeat the hardest content in the game with their large forty person
groups. There were even players that
were not concerned with the boss and dungeon encounters, but instead wanted to
prove themselves in combat against other players in what was called the player
vs player content or PvP.
Player vs Player based
games have become very popular. The most
popular of these recent PvP based games have been the titles League of Legends
and Call of Duty. In most instances of
PvP games, it is similar to the world of competitive sports. You form teams to compete against one another
in the spirit of friendly and occasionally non-friendly competition. In League of Legends, there are two armies that
are in a constant struggle. These two
armies are sending forces at each other and through defenses to destroy each
other’s headquarters. A group of five
players then aligns themselves with either side, and join this battle to
destroy the opposing forces’ headquarters.
Then the results of the battle are tracked online and the players’
accomplishments and statistics are tracked and they can get a feeling of
satisfaction, or identify areas of which to improve their gameplay for a competitive
edge. These players get to take on the
role of a virtual being and get to feel powerful. Many players are attracted to these kind of
games because of the feeling of accomplishment they get from it. In some cases the stats and achievements are
used to “prove” that they are better at the given game than the other players
competing. PvP games usually use the
statistics and achievements to reinforce the players accomplishments, but games
also have other ways of rewarding players.
The other main game type
is called player vs environment or PvE.
This game type is where the player is set against the world that has
been crafted to challenge them. This is
where the main game challenge will not come from competing with other players
around you, but instead working with them to achieve a common goal. The rewards can be anywhere from something as
simple as a notification that you’ve completed the event, to new equipment for
your character that will help your adventuring in some way. The most challenging PvE content was the raid
content. The players within the raids
would be rewarded with in-game currency and equipment for effectively slaying
the boss encounters. This positive
reinforcement was even expounded upon in later iterations of the game. World of Warcraft was an evolving online
world that continually had content added to the game to keep the players
satisfied. Players were further reinforced
for accomplishing any task in game by receiving in-game achievements. Achievements were special awards you received
for meeting certain conditions within the game.
Then these awards would be tracked in a list of your achievements. Players could then use their achievement list
to prove to other players that they have accomplished tasks in the game, or
just to remind themselves of everything they’ve done. World of Warcraft was able to maintain their
player base through repetitive positive reinforcement. Do what the developers intend, and receive
rewards for doing so. Giving this
constant reinforcement was a way to make every player within the game feel like
they were succeeding at something within their lives. It is this idea of temporary and immediate
satisfaction that has been drawing in players of all age ranges and personality
types.

These multiplayer
games teach prosocial concepts. “Games
can provide models, give direction, require practice, and prove immediate
reinforcement or feedback.” (Gentile 2009)
While games are so multi-faceted, they can also effect aggressive and
prosocial behaviors. Video games are a
carefully crafted space in which a player can practice behaving in ways they
don’t feel comfortable with outside of the game world. “It is, therefore, a continuous cycle of
learning and reinforcement.” (Gentile 2009)
If establishing communication and fellowship with other players is being
accomplished and reinforced by the game’s environment, then the players can
take the lessons they’ve learned from within the game, and apply them to their
everyday life. The games still require a
form of social mastery. This mastery can
be in many varying degrees of expertise, but the majority of players will see
and effect on their social skills from these games. In some cases, the results can be
negative. Games can cause hurtful
stereotypes to come out because the players believe they are behind this
impenetrable wall of anonymity.

The popular games
have been designed in ways to promote positive social interaction. World of Warcraft provides many different
kinds of in-game rewards for making a group of players and maintaining that
group while accomplishing in-game goals.
These games show the players that working with other people can yield
great rewards. They encourage less
social players to branch out of their comfort zone while still providing them
with a safe environment to do so. Even
if a player fails in one give social interaction, there are so many people
within the game, that they could almost have an unlimited opportunity for
practice. The only limits to that
practice are the amount of people playing the games. But when this number is in the millions, it
provides ample opportunity for practice.
In a chart about the General Learning Model referenced by Douglas Gentile
in the article Prosocial Video Games and Behavior, he describes that the
repeated learning encounters and practice are then effected by many different
factors before coalescing into what is viewed as your individual
personality. Everything from your
beliefs to your attitudes, stereotypes and emotions all play a role in interpreting
these lessons and shaping your personality.
In one of their studies they “directly tested the hypothesis that
habitual playing of prosocial video games would increase prosocial behavior
assessed months later.” (Gentile 2009)
They studied Japanese children’s video game habits and their behaviors twice
over a three to four month time span.
The results of these studies proved that there was a “bidirectional
relationship between prosocial gaming and behavior.” (Gentile 2009) These lessons and tasks within these games
that promoted playing with other people really were affecting the players in
positive ways. There was a similar study
done linking violent video game playing and aggression, but it just further
supports that these games can have a psychological effect on the players. The practice and lessons learned within the
game environment have a definitive impact on the players in both short-term and
long-term ways.

Games that are
designed to reinforce social behavior are indeed having a positive effect on
players inside the game as well as outside of the game world. In other studies done by Gentile and other
psychologists, it was shown that players that engaged in these prosocial video
games would then be more likely to engage in helpful actions towards other
players within the game on a more regular basis. While on the other side, players that engaged
in violent competitive video games would then have a tendency to have a hurtful
stance towards other players. “The
present state of arousal can also be affected by both personological and
situation variables. Some people are
chronically aroused, and numerous situational variables, including playing
certain video games, can temporarily increase arousal… This arousal effect is not specific to
violent video games, but could occur with any game that happens to be very
exciting.” (Anderson 2000) This feeling
of excitement and accomplishment keeps players involved in the prosocial or
hurtful environments which the game creates.

Games can be a
useful tool for positively and negatively reinforcing the behaviors of the
player. The game designers behind the
game systems are usually iterating on game systems that have been financially successful
in the past for other titles, but sometimes games are designed to give the
player a new kind of personal experience that they have not had before. Games are a powerful tool that can be used to
influence players in a variety of ways.

Anderson, Craig A., and Karen E. Dill.
"Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the
Laboratory and in Life." American Psychological Association, 2000. Web. 8
Apr. 2014. <http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/00AD.pdf>.

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About Me

I've been an avid game enthusiast for over a decade. I like to focus on the psychology of game design and I pay careful attention to how games affect players.
I don't have a PhD in interactive media psychology. I'm just the child of a clinical psychologist and I've been in far too much therapy myself.